Specialty Coffee Blog – Pull & Pour

How to Cup Coffee – Free Download

How to cup coffee cheatsheet

Cupping coffee is the best way to evaluate coffee—from evaluating green coffee to making purchase decisions as a roaster to evaluating coffee you are brewing at home. I collaborated with coffee expert and author, Scott Rao, to create a guide documenting how to cup coffee that is free to download.

Download the free “How to Cup Coffee” guide

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How to Cup Coffee

Cupping coffee is the industry standard method to evaluate coffee. These steps walk through how to cup coffee like a pro.
Course Drinks
Keyword coffee, cupping
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Author Scott Rao

Equipment

  • 6-7 120-200mL cups or glasses
  • 1 kettle for hot water
  • 1 burr grinder
  • 1 Digital scale with 0.1g resolution
  • 1 timer
  • 1 notebook or paper to take notes
  • 2 spoons ideally with a deep bowl

Ingredients

  • 60-70 grams coffee beans divided into 10g portions

Instructions

Prep

  • Boil water: Boil water of good quality for coffee brewing.
  • Prep bowls: Choose a set of bowls of 120ml- 200ml capacity.
  • Grind coffee: Grind medium-fine, usually just a bit finer than for pour over.

Brew

  • Add coffee: Add 10g of coffee to each bowl. Begin timer.
  • Add water: Add 170g of water into cup; water should be 30-60s off boil.
  • Break crust: At 4:00, break crust with back of spoon & take notes on aroma.
  • Clean surface: Clean the sludge from the coffee surfaces using two spoons.

Taste

  • Taste coffee: At 12:00, begin tasting the coffees, take notes & compare. Go in order slurping the coffee forcefully into your mouth so it coats your palate.
  • Repeat: Taste each sample a few times as it cools. Always take notes.

Share

  • Compare: Compare notes with your cupping partners.

Notes

Pro Tips:

  • Use neutral-tasting water ideally with alkalinity of 25-50 ppm.
  • Shuffle the cups label the bottoms of the cups and shuffle them around before pouring the water, so that you can cup “blindly” to avoid bias.
  • Stick to 6-7 coffees per cupping. Cupping more than 6-7 samples at a time can lead to “palate fatigue.” It’s better to cup in multiple flights than to attempt to cup 10-20 samples at a time.
  • Don’t sweat water weight. It’s ok for the water weight to be over/under by a few grams; it’s more important that the coffee weight is precise.
  • Purge the grinder. Purge the grinder with ~5 beans before grinding a new coffee, to replace retained grounds & avoid contamination with grounds from previous samples.
  • Share & Listen. It’s important to both share your impressions as well as listen to those of others; there are no right answers.

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